Human Origins: A Manual of Prehistory by George Grant MacCurdyReview by: A. L. KroeberThe American Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Apr., 1925), pp. 568-570Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1835587 .

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568 Reviewus of Books

expressions now obsolete. "Bratislava" we now call it, not "Pozsonv" or " Pressburg "; " Cluj ", not " Klausenburg " or "Kolozsvar "; " Du- brovnik ", not "Ragusa"; "Ljubljana", not "Laibach"; and so on.

A supplementary index is in the last volume and a list of " works from which passages have been quoted in the New Larned History "; this latter reveals the multitude of writers consulted and suggests the enormity of the task undertaken. Few thoroughly sound authorities, in English, have not been consulted on some part of their special fields. The variety is increased, not merely by the addition of suitable publicists but also by the periodicals of the learned societies.

Sliglht typographical errors have been noted on pages 8ioI, 8104, 9055. Others have probably crept in among the myriad pages.

ARTHUR I. ANDREWS.

Humian Origits: a Manual of Prehlistory. By GEORGE GRANT MAC-

CURDY, Ph.D., Research Associate in Prehistoric Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology in Yale University, Director of the Amiierican School of Prehistoric Research in Europe. In two volumnes. (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company. 1924. PP. xxxviii, 440; xvi, 5i6. $io.oo for the set.) IN Human Origins Dr. MacCurdy has made available a convenient,

authoritative, well proportioned and balanced handbook of prehistory, primarily cultural in scope but with due regard to the organic and geo- logical factors involved, and covering the enltire stretch from the first be- ginniings of geenus Homwo to the end of the undocumentary period of the Iron Age in Europe-to the threshold of hiistory in the narrower sense, in short.

The first volume reviews the Old Stone Age and the evidence of fossil man. The secoind treats of the New Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages, with a long appendix summarizing the data " from every station that has more than one relic-bearing horizon ". This appendix is not only invaluable for reference, but emphasizes the importance of cultural stratigraphy, the certainty of relative dating which it has achieved, and the significant fact, to which the author proudly calls attention oIn behalf of his subject, that there are virtually no more hiatuses in prehistory, at least in that of Europe.

The first chapter, which wisely is devoted to the development of pre- historic chronology, emphasizes the same guiding idea. There follows a chapter of sixty pages on the Ice Age, almost as difficult as most treat- ments of this topic are for the non-geologist-perhaps for the geologist also-but indispensable for sound construal of the placing of the cultural remains; aind four chapters on the Eolithic, Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic, averaging about thirty pages each. On the vexed question of eoliths, Dr. MacCurdy is known as the first American championi of

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MacCu rdv: Ht11an Origgins 569

these " near-tools ", but his attitude is eminently fair, reasonable, and al- most conservative. His Lower Palaeolithic includes only Pre-Chellean, Chellean, and Acheulian, his Mi( 'le the Mousterian. This grouping has certaini advantages but is scarc. standard. There follow nearly a hun- dred pages onl palaeolithic art, and then more than a hundred on fossil man. Volume I. concludes with a summary of the Old Stone Age, which is really a summary, not an interpretation.

Volume II., after a brief chapter on the Transitioni, opens with a long chapter on the Neolithic, followed with another in whiclh the " Stone-Age Culture Complex " is treated as a wlhole-again in review rather than in svnthesis. The Bronze anld Iron ages receive somewhat briefer treat- ment, a hundred pages together. The volumne concludes with a brief ac- count of post-Pleistocene man in physical aspects; after which follow the appendixes-the one already mentioned, a " Repertory of Palaeolithic Art ", anld one on " Preservation of Monuments ". The index has nearly forty pages of fine print. The two volumes contain over four hundred illustrations-well chosen, nearly all inlteresting, and splendidly executed.

"Chronology" in prehistory is of course a different thing from chronology in hiistory. As soon as written records fail, chronological evidence is indirect, often tantalizingly scant, and its findings are essen- tiallv relative, and wlhen absolute are usually little more than estimates. MAacCurdv is excessively figure-shy, especially for the palaeolithic. Now anld thenl somiething like a date has crept into a figure-legend, perhaps under publisher's coaxing; but MacCurdy's text for the pre-Neolithic era contains not even guesses. The nearest that the year-hungry can come to appeasing their appetite is by converting palaeolithic culture-periods into corresponding glaciations and interglaciations, and then trying to ex- tract a consensus from the varying estimates of geologists as to the age and duration of the glacial periods as these are summarized at the end of chapter II.

MIuch mnore definiite is the author's cultural-geological correlation. Here he follows the school which puts the Chellean into the second in- stead of the last interglacial. This is perhaps a minority opinion among specialists, but a sharper contrasting of the conflicting systems might have weakened the work's authority. The correlation adopted (pp. 84, 433) is: Pre-Chelleanl, first and second glaciations (and of course Intergla- cial i); Chellean and Acheulian I., I-G 2; Acheulian II., third glaciation; M\1ousterian I., I-G 3; Mousterian II. (Neandertal) and Aurignacian, fourth glaciation, advance; Solutrean and Magdalenian, fourth glaciation, later phases.

This tendency toward stretching cultural beginnings far back is no doubt allied with the author's favorable acceptance of the claims for nostro-carinate flints, and other old horizons in England, and for the Pilt- down finds. The latter get twice as much space as Pithecanthropus and Heidelberg miialn together, without quite attaining to a categorical valida-

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570 Reviezus of Books

tion. It seems a pity to build so much on contested evidence, as long as the uncontested yields a reasonably coherent interpretation. There is still some unconscious nationalism at work in prehistory-by no means confined to the British attitude in Piltdown. If more of the fundamental discoveries of the next decades were made by Dutch, Swiss, or Scandi- navians, unanimity might be more quickly reached.

The material in the second volume is less closely co-ordinated than in the first. It is more complex and much more difficult to organize with sharp mental outlines. The author has substantially followed his predce- cessors in milling about among the interesting phenomena of the Neolithic and Bronze ages. Still, a step ahead, leading to a clean-cut classification, geographical and temporal, of the intricate data, would have been a serv- ice for which the world would have been grateful. Only one map falls into the second volume-and this is wlhere distribution records are more needed than for the palaeolithic.

The treatment of the two metal ages is conventional in that it is really limited to the bronze and iron phases of the culture of the non- writing peoples of Europe. The data on Hallstadt and La Tene are well presented t Hallstadt and La Tene are treated as domains of the archaeolo& rather than of the culture-historian.

MacCurdy's book is based on a lifetime of genuinely hard study. It does not pretend to be inspiring. It is readable; and it is authoritative, exact, well proportioned, and will be extremely valuable as a work of reference. Its weakness is on the side of indecisiveness of judgment and fear of independent interpretation, a fear which is the more regrettable in that MLacCurdy's very unusual learning, his quite obvious freedom from bias, and his invariable soundness when he does render opinion, all show that he might safely have ventured to trust himself farther. As it is, no reader who follows him will go wrong.

A. L. KROEBER.

The Clhar-acter of Races, as influenced by Physical Environnionj ct, Natur al Selection, and Historical Developmxent. By ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON, Research Associate in Geography in Yale Univer- sity. (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons. I924.

Pp. Xvi, 393. $5.oo.)

SOM-IE y-ears ago, weakly yielding to the blandishments of an editor, I read 'Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race. That experi- ence created the temporary illusionl that I would never again read a book on " race '. Afterwards, fortunately, I did read Professor Hunting- ton's Civilization and Climate. If there are historians who think that all students of races are Nordic " fiends ", I commend them to read that book; and theii they should read the present work which is a kind of suppleimient and correction of the former one.

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